


i had to kill you (because it's so much fun)

by pensee



Series: ain’t nobody gonna change me [1]
Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Spies and Assassins, Always a girl Hannibal, Always a girl Will, Anal Plug, Dopey husband Matthew, F/F, Gift Giving, Intelligence schmelligence, Just lift up your dress darling, Killing Eve AU, Luckily Hannibal's got two, Vaginal Fingering, Villanelle Hannibal, Wearing sexy gifts from your mysterious femme fatale, Will has sex with Hannibal while she is married to Matthew, Will just needs someone with a strong hand in her life, Will's marriage is not a happy one, lowkey Sugar Daddy Hannibal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-23
Updated: 2019-09-23
Packaged: 2020-10-26 14:40:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,761
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20743859
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pensee/pseuds/pensee
Summary: Husband is a dope who does not realize we haven’t had sex in 65 days.Husband would be threatened by the fact that female assassin am currently chasing likely has a dick bigger than his.Will buries her face in her hands, knocking her glasses askew.Christ above.Enough with the stupid scribbles in the diary, she tells herself, reading over the ridiculous lines she’s just written and crossing out the one about her female assassin’s imaginary knob.Or: Will is extremely under-qualified to set a honeytrap against a mysterious female assassin she only knows by the letter "H". She manages to screw herself over, or at least, get screwed in the process.





	i had to kill you (because it's so much fun)

**Author's Note:**

> Jodie won an Emmy! Yay for all the KE fans out there!!
> 
> Anyway, this is the Killing Eve AU no one asked for. This follows S1 of KE (although honestly just borrowing imagery/general plotline of lower-level intelligence employee chasing female assassin than any major plot points from KE). 
> 
> Please, enjoy.

_Husband is a dope who does not realize we haven’t had sex in 65 days._

_Husband would be threatened by the fact that female assassin am currently chasing likely has a dick bigger than his. _

Will buries her face in her hands, knocking her glasses askew.

Christ above.

_Enough with the stupid scribbles in the diary_, she tells herself, reading over the ridiculous lines she’s just written and crossing out the one about her female assassin’s imaginary knob. But still, even after she’s clipped her pen to the back of the book, there it is, plain as day: 9:13 am train to Paris, and next to it, the one-line summary of her own sad, sexless life.

“To the devil her due,” she’d told Jack, less than fifteen hours ago in her boss’s office, where he’d likely concocted this little honeytrap plan and decided to spring it on her only a day before he hoped to carry the bloody thing out.

_She’s obsessed with you, Will_, he’d told her. _She’s sent you cards—a literal bleeding fucking heart to your doorstep, and she broke in to have dinner with you at knifepoint. She stole your bleeding suitcase while you and Beverly were in Berlin, and God knows what she did with it after that._

_And you’re obsessed with her as well_ had been the unspoken rest of the premise, but Will couldn’t find it in herself to be disappointed that Jack was willing to dangle her like bait on a hook. He had hired her to profile, and that was what she did; he’d never pushed her to go into the field, and the very fact that she’d dare speak up at one of his precious Meetings to suggest that the assassin who had been killing people up and down the Eastern European bloc—and now in Germany and Italy—was a woman had shocked Crawford to his very core.

They’d had a good working relationship before this, occasionally butted heads as would be expected, but she’d hardly ever spoken out of turn and actually been acknowledged. She knew it burned at him, that he had not been the one to see it first.

“I’m the first in the intelligence community that we know of who’s seen her and lived to tell the tale. And I’m going to be the one to catch her. You’re gonna catch her,” Will tells herself, staring into the full-body mirror that Matthew insisted they install in the closet and nearly tearing her hair out in dismay.

_No, no, bloody fucking hell, no_.

Whispers among the Powers that Be had told Jack that her female assassin—and where did Will start getting off on calling the other woman _hers_?—was expected to hit another event in Paris, some annual intelligence community slash political networking gala Will had been to before in order to press the flesh because her boss’s boss Krendler apparently thought she was “an asset to be flaunted”; pervert-speak for “fuckable”, of course.

So, she’d agreed to bite the bullet by representing her agency as usual, with the added fun of trying to stay alive in the midst of imminent danger from being gutted or worse if her assassin really did decide to show up this time around.

“But I’m not doing anyone any favors in this fucking dress,” she snarls to herself, ripping off the tight blue number that would have completely worked with Beverly’s lean, athletic build, but did nothing for her. Too snug in the hips, too dimensionless in the bosom.

No. Her assassin dressed well, she remembered that. No perfume or jewelry—not on the job—but she would wear something understated, if she did. Gold necklace, gold ring. Studs in her ears. Were they pierced?

Will had been thinking only of survival when the other woman, a devastatingly attractive brunet with a perfect streak of grey in her long hair, had broken into her house only to sit across from her, casually twirling a knife in her hand and asking Will to heat up whatever leftovers were in the fridge. She knew Will hadn’t cooked the shepherd’s pie she had fetched with shaking hands, and her lip twitched when Will mentioned that Matthew had been the one to prepare it, but she’d eaten politely, without leaving crumbs on the table, and even offered to wash the dishes before Will raced off to call her boss and the police.

She had made Will take her coat, a soft, oatmeal covered thing that didn’t quite fit her—too small in the shoulders—and Will had recognized the brand name from a luxury magazine ad, guessed that while the clothing was probably stolen, it was likely more to her assassin’s taste than any of the soft, cable-knit things Will had hanging around her own house.

“God, she’d want me in Monique Lau or Chanel, not…not this,” she mutters to herself, stripping off the third garment she’s tried on, anxiety only increasing as she hears Matthew start up the dishwasher, finishing up in the kitchen. It’s already one in the morning, and she has to be up in a handful of hours for briefing, Matthew a few more after that for them to make it to their train on time (they were both notorious late packers).

She used to not envy Matthew’s job, an eye-wateringly boring eight-to-five where his sole responsibility was digitizing redacted paperwork in the basement, courtesy of the lowest level security-clearance there was. But now that her own formerly simple job as an entry-level analyst has blown up to its current epic proportions, she was starting to second-guess herself.

“What ‘epic proportions’?” she scolds herself aloud. “Nothing’s bloody happened yet. _Shit_.”

Perched on the end of the bed, elbows on her knees and fingers combing restlessly through her tangled hair, she sighs.

“…no, it’s completely fine, I understand, thank you,” she hears Matthew say. Not from the kitchen, now, but closer. Step into the foyer and you were practically at the staircase, so the sound carried upstairs to where she was reasonably well.

He sounds surprised, but not unhappy, she thinks, fidgeting between launching herself downstairs and waiting for him to come up here to see her wading through her pile of rejected gala outfits.

_You’re going to catch an international criminal, not going to prom_, she scoffs to herself. Heaving herself up and into action, Matthew finds her hanging the ‘definitely nots’ back on her side of the closet.

“Um, someone—Some kind constable, actually, just brought this back for you,” Matthew says, placing her suitcase—yes, that’s hers, with a picture of Winston on the little identification tag—on the bed, where it sags, slightly, into the comforter.

Huh. That’s odd. There hadn’t been anything particularly heavy in there before. Normally, when people stole things, they took things out, they didn’t put—.

“What constable? At this time of—Is the car still outside?” she asks, in the moment it takes her to jog down the stairs. Flinging open the door, she’s met with an empty street and the neighbor boy who still lives at home drunkenly backing into his mother’s ornamental shrubs.

“Bugger,” she hisses, stomping back upstairs and finding herself unusually annoyed with Matthew’s clueless look.

And this was exactly why he didn’t have a higher-level security clearance.

“Um, about the constable, they said their name was Lass. Miriam Lass.”

The name hits Will like a ton of bricks. Crawford’s former protégé—the former Will Graham, some vindictive part of her whispers—long dead and long suspected of being victim to whatever organization is controlling her female assassin.

Swallowing audibly and putting a pin in the conversation she needs to have with her useless husband as soon as she gets a look at what’s in her suitcase, she reaches into her nightstand for a pair of nitrile gloves and comforts herself that whatever is in the case can’t be worse than a freshly harvested heart bulging (and she will admit this to no one, but almost comically, _almost_) from a half-empty box of petrol station chocolates on Valentine’s Day.

For all I know, it could be a dead body in here. Or part of it, she frowns, though there’s no leakage through the fabric on the sides of the case.

“Is this work-related, somehow?” Matthew frowns, with a slightly disinterested tone that means he’s just looking for permission to be released to go watch football downstairs.

“Ugh, just go,” she says, and Matthew gives her a little salute (woe to the her of the past, that thought the bloody gesture was cute), doing as bid.

Rubbing her gloved hands together, nitrile already somewhat soaked from her sweaty palms, she reassures herself that whatever intelligence she can glean from this suitcase is more valuable than whatever is currently leaking out Matthew’s ears as he tracks the exploits of his favorite FC.

The zip tugs apart easy enough, and she lets out a held breath when she flips the top open and realizes that there were clothes—a fairly massive amount, considering the size of her case—not amputated body parts weighing down her luggage.

Her assassin probably would’ve wanted her to savor the moment, the feeling of silk and satin on her fingers and palms, which is exactly why she tugs the dresses and trousers and blouses and rompers out without an ounce of reverence, tossing them all over the bed and taking mental note of their labels.

Some Italian brands, made in Italy or Spain. Others made in France, Germany, and a tag that’s not really a tag at all, just some kanji stitched into the fabric, bright blue thread with a neat rectangle around the characters.

A note flutters out as she shakes the wrinkles out of a white silk blouse that even through the gloves feels like Heaven, though she’d be hard-pressed to admit it, even under pain of torture.

Her assassin was not a nice person, not even a good one, which meant that accepting gifts from her (_evidence, call them evidence, call them what they are_) was by definition not supposed to feel good at all.

Picking up the note, she curses below her breath.

_Wear it for me, darling. Along with the black sheath and the mules in the inner pocket. You’ll be the most radiant person at the gala. -H. _

She should be offended. Her target, who impossibly knows her soon-to-be whereabouts well enough to render the honeytrap completely useless, thinks she can offer her fashion advice whilst Will’s being led by the agency that was supposed to protect her anonymity like a lamb to slaughter.

Instead, the two things that are flying through her head like lightning striking are one: Wear _it_? Wear what? Was there something else besides the clothing in here? And two: _I’ve got your name, I’ve got part of it, you fucking bitch, I’ve got part of you, and you just gave it up so easily, wonder what else I can get you to give up._

_Maybe I can even make you give away the whole fucking master plan_, she thinks not a moment later, reaching into the other pocket for the shoes she’s supposed to be wearing—blue velvet, disgusting—and finding her hand closing in on something else, too.

A black box, sealed nearly invisibly with a black ribbon that unhooks with a flick of her wrist. Huh.

Eyes wide, she stares at the contents of the box for a moment, disbelief quickly settling into annoyance as she gazes upon the glass anal plug contained within.

“Well, fuck me,” she snorts, remembering her promise to Crawford, how they sat there in his office and toasted, both of them well knowing this time tomorrow she could be lying in a pool of her own blood, guts spilt from her like thick red ribbons.

_To the devil her due_, she tells herself, and removes the plug from its case.

Despite the fact that Will feels like she’s very painfully and very obviously clenching around the plug inside of her, the rest of the room seems oblivious to her discomfort, Krendler still trying to sneak a few stray touches here or there as Matthew is less-than-vigilant in fending him off, mostly splitting his time between the buffet and the bar.

On edge the entire time, and not entirely because of the lackluster company, she spends most of her energy contemplating how in the hell her assassin would manage to sneak into a party with some of the most (alright, halfway-decently) prepared security in the world, and her remaining attention repeating _don’t get wet, don’t get wet_, to staunch the steady flow of liquid already soaking into the only pair of (ugly and inexplicably uncomfortable) seamless panties she has.

Confused as to what “H” meant about her wearing a “black sheath”, she had chosen one of the only black things in her case, a dress which went down to her ankles that, to her chagrin, gave her an unusually slim-looking waist, which Matthew would unsubtly paw at every few minutes when he wasn’t nagging each passing waiter for another drink.

_At least the slippers are comfortable_, she thinks, tracking Crawford’s plainclothes tactical team as they form a subtle perimeter around the keynote speaker (H’s most likely target number 7, not so high on the list), who makes a joke about the expensive champagne being served also being watered down to stay on budget.

Lunch will be served after the speech.

Watching the catering staff milling around in the background, the waiters gliding easily from table to table, Will has a sudden and jarring epiphany. Fumbling for her phone, she ducks off to the quietest corner she can find in close proximity to the ballroom in case anything goes wrong, and reassures herself that nothing will happen, as long as she gets off this phone call, as long as she can reach Jack in time.

“Pick up, pick up,” she says, cursing when his mobile goes straight to voice mail.

_Check the catering team again. The waiters, the ushers, anyone temporarily employed for this event. You already went through their faces at the start, to get into the building, but you didn’t check before the keynote. H is here somewhere, hiding in plain sight, and she’ll use the distraction—all these button ups and aprons and ties—to kill whomever she needs to kill and slip off without a fuss._

Easy enough to take off a wig, add a pair of sunglasses, change into a new costume and walk casually down a busy Parisian street acting like there wasn’t blood on your hands.

“That’s quite enough of that,” a familiar voice purrs, from directly behind her, and Will’s blood goes both cold and hot at once. Her mobile is pried from her hand, the grip on her wrist as unbendable as steel.

A sharp inhale from behind her, and Will’s nape breaks out in goosepimples without her permission.

“Are you smelling me?”

The words leap from Will’s mouth preceding a conscious thought to say them, but that is hardly pertinent right now, far less so than the barrel of a gun she feels pressed to the base of her spine.

“I really must introduce you to a finer perfume. And that lubricant you used to insert the plug…I’ll remember to include something better in the next parcel.”

Eyes still towards the empty corridor before them, Will swallows. “There’s not going to be a next parcel, H. If you—.”

“Yes, if I do anything to hurt you, poor Uncle Jack will hunt me to the ends of the earth. I’ve heard it all before, love, I doubt anything you’d say could scare me off now. The wheels are already turning.”

Will scoffs, a feeling like failure sitting heavy in her gut. “No. The wheels have already turned. Whoever you came here to kill is already dead. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have bothered stopping here to flirt with me. Well, other than the fact that it’ll drive Jack crazy that he wasted all his time looking for you here when this big to-do was really just a smoke screen.”

Wondering, for a frightening and fleeting moment, whether H had merely dropped a few bodies and threatened to drop a few more had really been work or an excuse to have Jack—and by default Will—after her again made Will shake, just a bit.

“Mmmm, that’s why I like you, Will. You’re one of the clever ones.”

A man with an exceptionally shiny bald pate and his head buried in his phone passes within two metres of them, but does not bother to glance up.

Will knows how this must look, her curled up with some strange, beautiful woman in the middle of the hall, but her last thought is of how her coworkers and husband will think of her because H’s free hand has already replaced her mobile somewhere and is making itself busy smoothing down her side, palm flat against Will’s middle. The gun is still its unfortunate partner in crime, but Will dares herself to shiver—not entirely out of fear—as H’s hand caresses her waist, then hip, then gives her bum a lusty squeeze.

If Matthew would’ve done that to her in public, she would’ve kneed him in the balls, but when H does it, for some reason, it just makes her knees a bit weak for reasons she does not want to examine at the moment.

“Are we going somewhere anytime soon? Or are you going to let me turn around to see you? It’s been so long,” she says, trying for sarcasm, but probably sounding as desperate as she senses H is, the other woman’s breath not as even as it could be. This, coming from someone whose profile reads that she had vivisected Minister Boyle’s daughter without batting an eye at the surely horrid sounds that were issuing from the poor girl’s mouth and larynx and what remained of her chest cavity.

“It has,” H says, completely serious, and Will’s taken aback by the genuine—well, not emotion, but something—affection in her voice. “To the loo, if you please, my dear.”

Stealing a page out of the old public-school book? Will wonders hysterically, glancing out of the corner of her eye to see the gun out of H’s hand, both of her palms somewhere on Will now, one at the small of her back, then the other at the juncture of her shoulder and neck, as if she were a parent, leading an unruly child to a time out.

There is a politely-phrased sign taped to the door—_closed for cleaning_—to the ladies’, and Will rolls her eyes out of H’s sight as she’s steered inside.

Christ, if she wasn’t so terrified, she’d almost be glad this was about to happen. Whatever _this_ was.

And whatever this was, it was certainly not murder, if the lack of gun or knife was anything to go by, though she was not so naïve to think that H wouldn’t be perfectly capable of killing her with her bare hands.

_Or those teeth_, she shudders, eyes drawn to the tips of wicked canines and incisors as H flashes her a smile in the long row of mirrors along the wall.

“Do you like how sharp they are, darling?” she asks, unerringly knowing exactly what Will is staring at, closing in behind and bracketing her arms on each side of Will’s hips. Still infuriatingly tall enough, even in flat shoes, to rest her head atop Will’s. As if they are a normal couple, looking at one another in the mirror, getting ready for work.

_Or for bed_, Will considers unhelpfully, noticing the subtle poke of H’s gun along the side of her trousers, disturbing the general neatness of the chef’s coat that she is wearing, sleeves rolled up to her elbows. Her hands are unusually veiny for a woman’s, Will thinks nonsensically, even for one as fit as H obviously is.

“Would you like me to bite you? You want something from me, that much is clear. And it is not to capture me, or you would not have worn the plug. Only the clothes. Giving me the illusion that you were following my directions.”

“Who—W-who says I don’t want to catch you?” Will hisses back, turning away from their reflection, her lower back to the sink ledge, forcing herself to look H straight in the eye. “You knew I wore the plug from the smell of the lubricant? Hypersensitive nose isn’t in your file, thin as that file is.”

“Then you still don’t know my real name,” H says, and Will notices that her eyes are brown, the same warm shade as coffee, lightened by the slightest bit of milk. She’d been wearing green contacts, then, the first time they met.

She’s older than Will had thought she was, seeing her up close like this versus only in the dim lighting of the kitchen she shared with Matthew, a moment that seems now a million miles away.

Reaching up to touch the pads of her fingers against H’s angular cheek, she finds herself in half a trance. What a dangerous place, she thinks, at the mercy of a killer, her at my mercy in turn. Thinking of the gun, thinking of yanking H by the tail of her long braid and bashing her head into the counter, Will chooses neither, feeling the skin and bones and hollows and peaks of her assassin’s features. Musing, for a millisecond, about how this feels so right.

“You were hoping to catch me—Catch, not capture. There is a difference. And not to worry, Will. I believe you already have.”

Will can feel the vibration of her speech through her fingertips, and presses her index finger into the corner of H’s upturned mouth.

“What?” she says, forgetting much of what she had said or done before, only that she’s finally found the person she’s sought all these months, and that this person has found her in turn.

_There’s some symmetry to it_, she thinks, _me insisting on taking this job. Me, being bound to fuck it up_.

“We’ll discuss it when there’s more time,” H says, and grabs her again, harder, this time, spinning her around so that she’s got her chest pressed up against the cool marble, ass out, breasts heaving and hair spilling from its clip.

“I’ll be careful, this shouldn’t muss your dress too much,” H adds, and Will yelps in protest that soon turns to frustrated self-denial as H clamps a hand over her mouth and pauses in gathering Will’s dress up and over her hips.

“Do you want this?” H asks, only pausing for a moment, but this is a long moment, Will thinks, from a woman who is very much used to taking and leaving nothing behind.

_Of course I bloody do, I haven’t stabbed you to death with my hairpin yet, have I_, Will snorts to herself, deliberately slowing her breathing through her nose until H releases her, her own hands bracing herself against the sink as she very slowly and very consciously makes the decision to pull her own dress out of the way, sliding her panties over her hips until she can kick them aside while avoiding looking at the crumpled, limp splay of fabric on the pink marble floor.

Taking a deep breath in through her nose, she plants her hands firmly against the counter and arches her back, presenting herself for H to look her fill.

And look she does, greedy fingers probably pressing bruises Will really won’t have to explain away to Matthew (no sex with hubbie, day 66 today) as she parts Will’s cheeks the slightest bit to smirk at the sight of the fleur-de-lis handle of the plug winking at her like an invitation.

“God, your sense of humor is disgusting,” Will blurts out, but instead of making H angry, her assassin just laughs, a deep, raspy chuckle that makes Will wonder if she smokes.

“And yet you chose to wear it anyway. So tender,” H murmurs, stroking the pinkish, slightly swollen edges of Will’s hole, which unaccustomed to the stretch of the plug, though it couldn’t be much wider than three of her own fingers.

Will, trying to ignore the needy heat gathering in her lower abdomen, making itself known as a slick wetness between her barely-spread thighs, wishes H would stop looking and start doing. The doing, she could handle. Lie back and think of England, whilst getting fucked or fingerfucked, most likely, because that was base and understandable and not at all someone wanting to pet her and touch her, just because they wanted to and just because they could.

H places her palm flat on Will’s back, and Will tenses for a second before she realizes what H is doing, the fingers of her other hand reaching under to tease over Will’s lips, slicking themselves before she presses the first joints of her index and middle fingers against Will’s rhythmically flexing hole.

“Relax,” H reassures, and works her index deeper, then middle, Will’s insides spreading around her incrementally till they’re encased a few centimetres more. Her wrist turns the slightest bit, changing the angle, and Will whimpers as the fingers sink deeper, already knowing that H is trying to reach that awful spot along her front wall that no sex with her husband ever seems to do.

The whole thing would feel a little like some sort of humiliating medical examination, her standing with her ass up in the air, waiting to be penetrated in her ridiculously expensive party clothes, though when she meets H’s eyes in the mirror, sees the motion of the other woman’s throat as she swallows, then licks her lips, she realizes that although she has barely touched the other woman—save for their obvious carnal connection down below—that H is trying not to tremble as much as she is at the contact.

“Can you take a third?” H asks, not really a question as she prods curiously at Will’s body, which opens a bit more for her ring finger.

Alternating between rubbing and filling and sliding her fingers in and out at a dizzying pace that makes Will start to actively drip, H whispers at her nape something that Will never thought she would hear, in this situation or any other.

Given so freely—the price, to Will, seems so low—Will chokes down a hiccupped wail of pleasure and nods, ever so slightly, gasping as H takes hold of the plug and starts working it in and out of her hole, keeping pace with the hand playing at her cunt.

Redoubling her efforts, H’s long digits stroke that terrible spot inside of Will while Will reaches up the front of her dress and gets her thumb on her clit. Only a bit of pressure this close to orgasm usually tips her over the edge, and it’s not going to be long now, she thinks, H taunting her again, whispering, _I’ll tell you, I’ll tell you, Will, I promise, and I always keep my promises_…

Will feels herself clench up tightly around H’s fingers when she hears what she needs—the thing she should take to Jack but really wants to keep to herself, lock it up tight where no other living person will ever hear the name again.

“Hannibal,” she pants, soft and spent, as a trickle of blood makes its way down the back of her neck, the shape of H’s teeth embedded there in the vulnerable tissue.

Groaning in dismay at the very bloody and very visible mark left behind, Will’s mouth twists in discomfiture as Hannibal shushes her.

“You worry too much,” she says. “I have the perfect solution. One I’ve been meaning to find an opportunity to return to you.”

The scarf belonged to Matthew’s mother, and it is sort of an heirloom in that way, but Will really only cares for it because the color is gorgeous and reminds her of a glowing turquoise ocean on a clear day. She’d lost it in Berlin, when H had taken her case, and hadn’t thought much of it being missing even when her luggage was returned.

Just as Hannibal predicted, Matthew does not even notice that anything has changed about her appearance, even including the presence of his mother’s scarf that he had definitely not seen Will walk into the gala with earlier.

“Jesus, I was knocking at the door for a minute. Didn’t you hear me?” he asks. “I thought something had happened. You weren’t answering your phone, and Jack sent some of his goonies after me—. I mean, I told him this would be the logical place for you to disappear to.”

“I’m fine, honey, there was just a clogged toilet, so the staff had to put the sign up. But I had a bit of an emergency, so she was helping me,” Will explains, hating how seamless her lie is, but relishing the moment when Matthew’s irritation fades into his usual bland, resting expression indicating his belief.

“Yes, there was a bit of a flood,” Hannibal smiles, teeth pristinely white, and miraculously clean of Will’s blood. “But the custodial staff insisted I help the madam with finding the necessary…hygiene products. I was one of the only females available for the job.”

Eyes glazing over even further, Matthew waves a hand in the air as if to dispel the image of feminine hygiene products from his thoughts.

“Okay, God, Will, you could’ve just said ‘period’, and I would’ve stopped asking. Jack thought it was some kind of Incident, but you were just calling him to let him know you’d be off to the loo and not to fret over it. Fine, fine.”

Letting him draw his own conclusions seems best, Will thinks. It saves on half the work.

Matthew, with his hand pressed over his eyes in what is supposed to be a comical way, she’s sure, holds the door for her with his body as he gestures for her to move along out into the hall.

Risking a backward glance at Hannibal, she says, “Thank you,” in poorly articulated French, watching the smile in Hannibal’s eyes for a moment as she heads out the door.

Any amiable feelings she has towards her assassin last about as long as it takes for her to open up her purse and find only the towel-wrapped glass plug, a few assorted tissues, her mini-diary, a lipstick for today, and her truly astounding collection of pens.

No phone (Hannibal had taken it in the hall, right), and her wallet is missing. Her work keycards and her petrol rewards card were in there.

“Bugger,” she says, loud enough to startle the taxi driver taking them back to the hotel.

Hannibal taps questioningly at Will’s phone for half a dozen tries before it locks her out again.

A message flashes across the screen: _You will have 3 more tries before this device will be locked for the next 24 hours. _

Will would not leave something as important as her work mobile PIN to chance, but neither would she prefer to choose a suggestion from a prefabricated template. Hannibal had already gone through her wallet and found no helpful suggestions.

_What did she enjoy? What did she smell of? Did she have a favorite film? What brand of clothes did she have in her closet? When Hannibal had visited her home, what had stood out? What could Hannibal use to—._

An image stops her thoughts short, sudden and jarring as a bolt of lightning.

The picture, on her suitcase. A faint aroma of pet dander. What was the dog’s name? Collar, collar, the collar said W-something.

W-I-N-S-T-O-N.

PIN took only six numbers. Try the first six.

_Success_.

Although the covert seizure of a lower-level analyst’s phone and certain company belongings would not necessarily thrill Hannibal’s employers, the bit of sleight of hand did indeed thrill Hannibal on a personal level. Will did not live her life on her mobile device like others in the business might, but it would provide valuable insight to her lifestyle nonetheless.

(Hannibal made it a point to exploit whatever weak spots she could find, but her own are shockingly visible at the moment, have been since the day she got the vaguest inkling that someone—some brilliant, beautiful someone—had sifted through the lack of information the intelligence community had about her and somehow Seen exactly who she was. It was only natural for her, a solitary creature nonetheless saddled with a social organism’s instincts, to seek such a person out.)

Unlike Hannibal herself, the only negligence Will had been guilty of was making the mistake of mixing business and pleasure. Since her home life provided so little of the latter, why not cram it all into one? Though Will’s bosses might not be so understanding about this reasoning, at least Crawford could say that the honeytrap had proven effective on its most base level.

An old woman that has been sitting next to her on this train to Geneva had not spoken to her for the first hour of their journey, but she leans over now and stares at a picture of Will and Matthew that Hannibal has pulled up on the screen, posing awkwardly with their arms around each other in front of an American tourist attraction in a city that Hannibal has vowed to never set foot in again.

“Oh, what a lovely couple. Are they your friends, then?” the old woman asks, in English, and Hannibal tilts her head, mock considering.

“One is. The other isn’t. The one that’s not? Well, let’s say I’m going to skin them and turn them into a centerpiece at our reception,” she says, as if she is joking (God knows she is not).

“Oh. _Oh. _So, you want to be more than friends with one of them,” the old woman says, wagging her finger as if Hannibal has just done something hilarious. “Jealousy is a nasty thing, hm? Just be gentle when you skin her.”

“Him,” Hannibal clarifies, thumb covering up Matthew’s face in the picture, and the old woman repeats, “Oh. _Oh_. Well, then, be careful with _him_, then.”

“I don’t intend to be,” Hannibal says, smirking, as the old woman’s friendly expression falters and her reply is lost in the loud clatter of a passing train.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm @penseeart on Twitter to talk KE or Hannigram or scream about sexy headcanons, that too.


End file.
